Reviews by MathBrush

This is a well-coded TADS game about coming to grab your things from an empty house after a divorce.

Play primarily revolves around exploration and discovery of key items that advance the story in some way.

The theme is about divorce, loss, and 'what might have been?' I took these themes seriously, as I am recently divorced and could understand some of what the narrator was going through.

This is a pretty messy divorce, though. Unhealthy events and actions abound. The narrator is regretful, of course, but regret can only take you so far, and I think that's one of the main themes here.

Overall, the mechanics and story work for me, but there are a few sticking points here and there. I had a lot of difficulty getting started. The game provides no hints, and takes the position that players should take careful notes and that some info won't be repeated. I figured things out in the end but I was frustrated (spoiler for main mechanic: (Spoiler - click to show)more specifically, I noticed that some objects wouldn't go through the shadow, so I thought none could, and didn't try taking the soil through. I thought I had left the shards behind and the pot appeared, so it too me a while to realize what was going on).

For the story, I felt like things were perhaps spelled out a bit too much for my personal taste. This is a real, visceral story, but I feel like a lot of art that I find 'magnificent' has a sort of ambiguity to it that allows you to draw many interpretations from it. Having our feelings and reactions to everything and the 'meaning' of it all spelled out at the end felt somewhat restrictive.

Overall, I think people who play this will be pleased, especially for those looking for mild but non-trivial puzzles mixed with emotional storytelling.

This game takes the classic, depressing/sacrifical tale of the little matchgirl and uses it as a setting for a larger story.

In the original story, each match a girl lit gave her another vision of brighter things. In this game, each match is used to teleport to the user to...whatever location Ryan was interested in talking about that day?

The overall puzzle structure is fairly lenient; it is generally a fetch quest, and each task can almost always be solved by brute force, but has internal logic.

+Polish: The game is smooth. I had a couple of issues with synonyms here and there (literally can't remember what, but it was me typing dumb stuff), but the vast majority of possible actions I tried worked great.
+Descriptiveness: Very clear and easily envisioned settings and characters.
+Interactivity: The quest structure is simple, but I felt allowed to go off the rails at times.
+Emotional impact: It didn't have quite the gut punch of the original, but was more fun.
+Would I play again? Sure!

I think this will end my journey through the iterative puzzle games in this series. I hesitated last game due to some graphic material (a dwarf that was (Spoiler - click to show)hanging by a noose), and this game includes some drug-related activity; put together, it feels like a kind of humor I'm not into, kind of like the Unnkulia series from the early 90's.

This iteration is much more reserved than the last. It adds a few simple items to a previously empty area in the midgame. Again, it can be difficult to figure out which commands to use. I feel like the previous episode may be better overall.

Edit: I see the next one's tagline is 'can you polish a turd' so I feel justified in assuming this vein of humor will continue.

I suppose I should say that this game might need a warning for either suicide or lynching, depending on how you interpret it (there is a (Spoiler - click to show)dwarf hanging from a noose), which honestly felt unnecessary.

This update adds a very large area with interesting mechanics including scoopable items, an NPC with several requirements, timed actions, and flame. However, very precise commands are required. I had to decompile the game to discover that the necessary command for an important action was (Spoiler - click to show)BURN something WITH FLAME and not just BURN SOMETHING).

However, that whole dwarven area can be skipped. I didn't even know what the purpose of it was till I decompiled; apparently its final item (the (Spoiler - click to show)axe) is meant to solve the puzzle of the (Spoiler - click to show)nest with a doorknob in it, which you have to cut down, but you can just take that object directly.

That said, this is a pretty significantly large game now. It's pretty rough with implementation and needs polishing (several beta testers would have helped) but has come a long way from the original game, which was just two rooms with a locked door and a key.

This iterative game series (each building on the one before it) has gotten to some pretty clever puzzles. I especially enjoy the puzzle that leads to (mild spoilers (Spoiler - click to show)the axe).

Implementation issues are rife, though. To complete it, I had to use the follow non-standard verbs (moderate spoilers): (Spoiler - click to show)SNIP, use BLANK with BLANK, and POUR.

While the increasing puzzle size has made the game quite a bit more enjoyable, I almost with we were seeing multiple levels of polish and implementation instead, with less and less bugs and more fanciness. But the problem with that is that minimalist content is easy to add; its complexity is linear, with a small change in size requiring a small change in coding. But smooth programming is quadratic; making a very polished game requires coding in tons of interactions between different items and things, adding responses to everything players try, getting a lot of testers, etc. So I'm not sure it would work in practice to show that through a series of games.

This edition of the iterative series (each adding new material to the previous game) adds quite a few new rooms and makes previous interactions require more direct input.

However, most of the new rooms are quite sparse, and the new syntax for things isn't always clear (for instance, it took me a while to figure out how to use the (Spoiler - click to show)grabber). Also, it includes exits that are indicated in the status bar but not the text, which I find annoying in most games. Overall, though, I'm still interested in seeing what's next.

This edition of the iterative game series (each one building on the code of the last) improves on the premise by including a new reactive NPC (Rex, a dog who follows you) and incorporating light and a dark subterranean area.

There are still unfixed bugs or quality of life issues from the past that likely won't get fixed in future updates (like 'bathroom' being lower case or disambiguation issues with keys), but it's pretty fun seeing all the things you can do.

As an individual game, 2 stars. As part of the series, 3 stars.

There is a long tradition of big Lovecraftian games in IF (Theatre, Anchorhead, The King of Shreds and Patches, Lydia's Heart, Ecdysis, etc.) This is one of the most recent such entries, and one I beta tested.

The setting is that you are moving to a new city for a scholarship at a foreign university. You move into an old, isolated house and all sorts of strange occurrences start to happen.

This is a sprawling game, including big locations (including a town and a village), and includes complicated set-piece puzzles like big machines and run-ins with cultists.

Overall, there's a rich background and detailed writing. To me, the thing I struggled with the most was the pacing. Some major events take place as almost-instantaneous cutscenes, especially early on, while more mundane things get dragged out unnecessarily at times. Still, this is a solid and enjoyable game, and I can recommend it to people looking for more good Lovecraftian games.

I beta tested this game.

This is a pretty long choice-based game with an expansive map. Each room has about 1 puzzle on average. The majority of the puzzles are the same: The screen is divided into 4 invisible stripes. Moving your mouse up and down will cue an animation filling that stripe (generally a sound wave) and play a sound. One sound will be different from the others; you must click that one.

There are other puzzles from time to time.

In addition, there are save terminals and other points that play scenes from the silent film The Passion of Joan of Arc while a synthetic voice reads text in a heavy french accent.

The idea is that an AI company cloned/re-made Joan of Arc to use for commercial benefit, but things went wrong. You learn more as the game progresses, of course.

There are enemies, and defeating them drops 'bits' that you can use to buy shortcuts.

It's really clever and polished, and very descriptive. But the interactivity is a bit tedious, especially when re-crossing an area over and over again. For that reason, I've never fully replayed it after testing, but played the first few rooms again before writing this review.

This series of games starts with a simple puzzle in the first entry (just a locked door) but adds puzzles every time.

This entry is quite complex compared to earlier entries, with a broad map, numerous tools and items, an NPC, easter eggs, etc.

However, some bugs and typos have crept in, like 'bathroom' being lower case and some synonyms not being set (like for the (Spoiler - click to show)safe, where 'set' and 'turn' don't work but 'turn' does).

So the game isn't polished, but it is more descriptive and compelling than the others.